A searching outlook and meditative tone that will satisfy the faithful and doubtful alike.
Weeks’ debut memoir chronicles both the geographical and spiritual journey of a female priest who arrived at faith through doubt.
With her mother and older sister, Marta Sutton Weeks left Buenos Aires for Utah when she was only a toddler. Her maternal family history was rooted in Mormonism in a town just outside Salt Lake City, and Weeks’ great-grandfather had been a polygamist and contemporary of Brigham Young, although by the time Weeks’ family returned to Utah, they had largely abandoned religion. Weeks was fascinated by religion’s role in her community, but it wasn’t until she met her husband that she was baptized into her in-laws’ Episcopalian faith. After marriage, college, adventures involving her in-laws’ work in petroleum and raising her family, Weeks began taking theology classes at a theology center. Eventually, nearing 60, she went to seminary in Austin, Texas. Her religious studies took her around the world, only to deliver her back to a grueling set of exams and more self-doubt. In this memoir, her treatment of doubt—the impetus behind both her religious education and her practices as an ordained Episcopalian priest—helps this deeply reflective memoir transcend mere narrative. Weeks doesn’t preach; in fact, she deftly explores the role of uncertainty in her attraction to the Episcopal Church as well as its progressive policies that allow women and gays to be ordained. Her own husband’s agnosticism, which informs much of Weeks’ ministering, is also used to characterize her marriage, an endearing union in which they’re alternately at odds with and supportive of ideological mindsets. In an effort to be thorough and historically accurate, Weeks occasionally digresses into irrelevant material about other people’s backgrounds, and the inclusion of her mother’s and sister’s writing detracts from the fluidity of Weeks’ simple, melodic prose. But the perspective Weeks brings to her spiritual journey and to the allure and repulsion of religion is worth it.
A searching outlook and meditative tone that will satisfy the faithful and doubtful alike.Pub Date: March 29, 2007
ISBN: 978-0595405015
Page Count: 338
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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